Isleen
=Appearance= ::::::::::::::I belong to this land. Where do you belong? ::Like many Elkhorn women, Isleen fights and hunts in the nude, wearing nothing more than the woad (paint) made from the local vegetation or the blood from slain foes she smears in intricate designs on her skin. In colder weather the huntress will wear furs, but never anything heavier than leather and always something that allows her to move elusively and noiselessly in the wilds. She has scars on her left cheek presumably made from the talons of an animal. On her neck is a characteristic necklace made from bones, fangs, and the feathers of animals collected over the years, and she is rarely seen without it. =Personality= ::::::::::::Understand your enemy... and you may not have an enemy at all. ::She is prone to a cold sense of cynicism, shadowy, and mysteriously acute, inspired by the cryptic chaos of her strange childhood. Isleen is in one phrase the “dark mother”; protective of the clan and when it is necessary she plays dirty. She acts upon her violent nature swiftly and with grim repose, and for the hunter, it is not about the killing – it’s how the killing is done. She is severe, cunning, and dutiful, not without her own playfulness and yet in no support of childish behavior; she is open to the tales and interests of people, but quick to turn when displeased. She sees the world in black and white – that is, something either is or is not – and will commonly shy from the company of others, being awkward in most social gatherings and almost painfully silent. Civilization is lost on her and thus Isleen has little desire to wander beyond the reaches of her homeland, traveling only when benefiting her clan in some way or in their company. =History= ::::::::::"Beware, a child shall be born unto your dwelling - tragedy will follow in her shadow." ::Born in the Blood Glens near her mother’s tribe, Isleen tromped the Curraghn for years pitching yurts and toiling in the hearth with her mother. Her father’s tribe, a considerably less hospitable clan of hunters was the Murrogh people, who plagued the southern highlands with frequent raiding not only on Cimmerian villages, but in the Border Kingdoms and the fringes of Aquilonia, doing so for conquest and to plunder foreign treasures. Isleen was a fast learner and in spite of her weaknesses she proved valuable, and looked forward to hunting with the other men and women. As it happened however, the girl fell into a fire one evening and consequently went blind. A few weeks thereafter she awoke to find herself alone in the grasslands, unceremoniously abandoned. ::A wandering shaman found Isleen stranded in the Curraghn starving and near death, and with her doubts nursed the naked thing back to life. Amazed by Isleen’s recovery, the shamaness in question—called simply “the old woman”—began to teach the girl life in the wilds, a period Isleen never recalls fondly and always with some measure of horror. Yet in spite of her reservations it seems to have worked; the girl survived, so much so there are few today who recognize her as blind at all. When she came of age it was beneath the sacred standing stones of Lacheish with simple words: “You are a child no longer.” And thus, the cub left mother bear’s den. ::Isleen’s arrival in Clan Elkhorn was unceremonious: she found them, she’ll say, and followed them about until the chieftain—then Ahearn Pict-Killer—asked if she wished to stay, and agreed. Since that day the blind huntress has become not only the huntmaster but a mother of sorts to the clan, and is affectionately referred to as the Mother Huntress. ::She was eventually courted by Fearghus mac Finnegan and following a long courtship she became his wife, and has recently bore him a son, Fionnlagh.